Frustrated US summons Bremer for talks

The US administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer, was abruptly summoned to Washington on Tuesday to discuss ways to speed up efforts to organise a new Iraqi government.

The talks came as US officials expressed growing frustration with Iraqi transition authorities and mounting concern over attacks on US forces in Iraq.

While Mr Bremer was in Washington, mortar bombs fell on the green zone in Baghdad, the high-security area where the American-led coalition forces and civilian staff live and work. At least two landed in the zone, according to a coalition spokesman. As many as four more landed outside. No casualties were reported.

The mortar barrage came hours after the US commander for Iraq, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, said his soldiers would take a hard line against emboldened insurgents.

"We are taking the fight into the havens of the enemy, into the heartland of the country," General Sanchez said in a rare, hour-long news conference. He said the coalition would drop bombs and crush houses if that was what it would take to crush the militants.

Asked if insurgents, who this month have shot down two US military helicopters, posed a growing threat, General Sanchez said: "When you see we had five, six attacks a day in May and now it's 30, it's unmistakable that the number of engagements is increasing."

At the White House, Mr Bremer met Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and others for talks on how to hasten the development of an Iraqi constitution and elections.

Senior Administration officials have grown impatient with the US-organised Iraqi Governing Council, which has fallen behind in its work.

Some US officials have asked whether it would be preferable - following the model used in Afghanistan - to create a transitional government with more authority that would allow the US-led coalition to more quickly reduce its role.

"There are ideas floating now about how to strengthen the process in the interim period," one senior official said. He insisted that reports that the Administration would sack the governing council were "overdramatic", and that the focus of the hour-long meeting with Mr Bremer was on how to move to a new government and constitution.

The officials discussed ways to make sure that the 24 members of the Iraqi Governing Council would meet the December 15 deadline for creating a timetable for a new constitution.

Also considered was how to start spending $US18 billion ($A25 billion) recently approved by Congress for Iraq's reconstruction, officials said.

The senior official said a possibility remained that the talks could lead to an alternative structure for an interim Iraqi government.

In Baghdad, Iyad Allawi, one of the governing council's nine rotating presidents, said it was understandable that the council was behind schedule. "This is democracy," he said.

Senator Richard Lugar, Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, when asked whether he thought the Bush Administration should change its political strategy in Iraq, said: "Probably we should, and the question is how to proceed."